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"This is the worst news I could give you..." said the doctor to Leslie Bauer after doing a cat scan in the emergency room. "You have a 3.5 centimeter brain tumor ."
Many people are aware of breast cancer and have heard generaly about lung cancer. But few know of Small Cell Lung Cancer which is incurable and kills thousands yearly. Fewer yet know that this cancer will usually move through the blood stream to the brain where it will form cancer brain tumors.
Lung cancer causes more cancer-related deaths in the world than any other cancer. In the United States. Lung cancer claims more lives every year than colon cancer, prostate cancer, and breast cancer combined..
If you catch SCLC early before it spreads to other organs you have a much better chance of longer survival. If you catch it after it travels to other parts of the body, such as the brain where it will create brain tumors, you currently have little or no chance for survival. Your doctors will talk in general terms, such as "quality of life," but unless you ask them point blank they will avoid talking about your survival chances. Many oncologist will avoid giving you a direct prognosis until it is too late.
Leslie, on the right, had huge headaches for months. The doctors just gave her antibiotics, thinking that it was a sinus infection. They totally missed TWO big cancers, one was a brain tumor and the other a tumor in her lung. She was a smoker who earlier had pneumonia, a sign that should have alerted the doctors. Once the tumors were discovered she went through chemo and through whole brain radiation which totally destroyed her quality of life.
Our goal is to reduce the incidents of small cell cancer by educating potential at-risk populations, by funding specific research that will target this terrible killing terrorist within and to help individuals with small cell cancer. And it is our hope that we can help kill cancer.
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